As I might have mentioned once or twice recently, I am currently doing a show at the Orlando Fringe Festival. The other day as I was walking around the festival grounds I had the pleasure of meeting Walter Michel DeForest, who performs a one-man show about the life of Vincent Van Gogh called Van Gogh Find Yourself. I have to say, the man was born to play Van Gogh (almost literally so, as he points out "Walter DeForest was born with a hole in his heart on July 30th. On July 30th, Vincent was buried. He died from a gunshot wound to the chest.")

Oh the sweet synchronicity, then, that today of all days I got to watch the Vincent episode. Let's talk about that.

Vincent and the Doctor

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

There are rare times when Doctor Who transcends its genre roots and does something truly magnificent - stories like Marco Polo, The Reign of Terror, and Human Nature spring to mind. I absolutely count Vincent and the Doctor in that category. The story is pretty much irrelevant (a mysterious invisible griffin thing called a Krafayis is running about late-19th-century rural France), it is the character study that means everything.

The story opens with a sequence at a present-day museum where the Doctor is treating Amy to some fine art, and they visit a Vincent Van Gogh exhibit hosted by an uncredited Bill Nighy. The scene acts as a primer on fine art, and in particular describes why Van Gogh is so highly revered while also explaining that he never lived to witness his own success having taken his own life after losing his battle with depression and mental illness. Bill Nighy is magnificent here, and was a truly amazing "get" on the part of the casting director.

Of course the Doctor spots something evil in one of the paintings, and so it's off to see Vincent and to find and defeat the monster.

But as I say, the whole monster thing is just a bit of framing in order to put the story in motion. The vast majority of the episode is a sincere study of Vincent Van Gogh, performed magnificently by Tony Curran. It takes real guts to take what amounts to a silly children's sci-fi show and spend the better part of an hour exploring the complexities of mental illness with such deftness and compassion.  There are the manic and depressive phases, the descriptions of how he "hears" colors, and even a lovely scene in which the three of them lie on their backs in a field at night gazing up at the sky while Vincent in effect describes what will become his masterpiece Starry Night.

Of course the monster is defeated, with a surprising amount of sadness, but the real payoff is when the Doctor and Amy take Vincent on a trip back to the museum exhibit so that he can see for himself how valuable his work is. Once again Bill Nighy shines, as the Doctor asks him to explain briefly where Van Gogh rates in the history of art (with Vincent standing well within earshot).

Well, big question, but to me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly, the most popular great painter of all time. The most beloved. His command of color, the most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world. No one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world's greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.

And yet, despite this affirmation, once Vincent is returned to his own time his life does not alter in the least. He still takes his own life in a depressive episode. Amy is, of course, devastated, and the Doctor comforts her while explaining that although they were not able to save Vincent they did make a difference.

The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. Hey. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things.

This is such a potent reminder; a message that mental health issues don't have magical fixes and that just "being happy" is no cure at all. I absolutely adore this story for its courage in addressing these kinds of issues head-on in a format that is frequently dismissed as just a bunch of aliens and spaceships and shiny special effects with no real depth. It is not surprising at all that the writer of this episode, Richard Curtis, is better known as the screenwriter for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill,  Bridget Jones's Diary, and Love Actually (which, I suspect is directly related to how they were able to land Bill Nighy for his cameos).

Seriously, Doctor Who just doesn't get much better than this one.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eleventh
Companion(s): Amy Pond
Episode(s): Vincent and the Doctor
Steps Walked: 7,503 today, 3,069,974 total
Distance Walked: 4.06 miles today, 1,601.76 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 100 today, 4,364 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
How Many Times has Rory Died?: 2 Is Anything Cool?: Not only are bow ties cool, but Bill Nighy's bow tie is particularly cool
Weight: 250.10 lbs (five day moving average), net change -57.20 lbs